Shipra H. N. 
Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, and his partner Grecia Munoz recently conducted a brief ethnographic research project to observe a day in the life of their delivery partners. During the research, they ‘discovered’ that Zomato delivery partners are prohibited from entering malls through the main entrance and are instead required to use external staircases.
Additionally, these workers often wait in stairwells for their orders. The CEO shared a meticulously vlogged the account of this incident and expressed the need to collaborate with malls to improve the ‘working conditions’ of delivery partners and encourage malls to be more ‘humane’ toward them.
CEO of a leading app ‘unaware’ about the plight of gig workers
How was the CEO of one of the leading app aggregators unaware of the working conditions and concerns of delivery agents? Hundreds of papers have been published highlighting the various challenges faced by these workers.
A simple search on Google Scholar would have sufficed. Moreover, Zomato already has a call centre where delivery workers can raise concerns about security, salary, targets, and other issues. Their (dissatisfied) interactions with customer representatives are, hopefully, recorded by senior management.
A day of serious reading could have provided Goyal with insights into the daily struggles of these ‘partners’ at a much lower cost than this research project. One could assume that this whole exercise was merely a strategic move and he already knew of the concerns and understood that the only way to get malls to collaborate was by going viral.
Goyal’s post on X talks about the issue of ‘working conditions’ and ‘humane treatment’ for delivery workers. These two concepts don’t belong together in the same context. ‘Good working conditions’ are primarily the responsibility of employers, and the ambiguous relationship between aggregators and their ‘partners’ complicates things.
Malls come under the Shops and Establishments Act, which regulates working hours, rest intervals, weekly holidays, and provisions for basic amenities such as drinking water, toilets, and first aid facilities. The aggregator cannot reasonably expect a mall, which does not employ these delivery agents, to provide benefits out of goodwill without any contribution from the platform itself.
Aggregators avoid labour laws
This has a lot to do with labour laws, which aggregators worldwide have been actively avoiding. Shifting responsibility for working conditions onto malls is neither fair nor feasible. If the goal is to publicly shame malls into improving conditions, that’s a different story.
Now, making malls more humane toward workers, is a valid point, but the change so quick will only happen at surface level. The way delivery partners, who typically come from lower economic backgrounds, are treated is not determined by the security guard who stops them. The guard is simply following the management’s lead and mimic mannerism dictated to them.
And the management’s decisions are shaped by the ‘conspicuous consumer,’ the economically privileged group that malls depend on for income. Preventing delivery workers from using the main entrance allows customers to enjoy a sanitised shopping experience, free from reminders of societal inequities.
While this isn’t part of the traditional caste system, it mirrors caste-like dynamics, where individuals from the lower class are marginalised to maintain the comfort of those from the upper middle class. This same entitlement extends to housing complexes, where delivery agents are barred from using residential lifts. Management dictates that these lifts are reserved for ‘residents,’ effectively colonising these spaces for the privileged. So, if the mall takes an initiative an instruct its employees to provide similar respect to delivery workers that they show to customers, though done at surface-level interactions, it will be a good beginning.
Malls using their right to restrict entry, as per their property rights, is not new. They often use this power against marginalised groups. Unfortunately, this discrimination is not limited to delivery workers. In July this year, a man wearing a dhoti was asked to change into jeans before entering a mall. Public outcry prompted the legislative assembly to issue guidelines stating that dhotis are cultural attire and should not be grounds for denial of entry. But this was not an isolated incident.
Most of the times, when stopped from entering such establishments, people leave the malls scared and never come back. These rules by malls, needs serious reflection as to how they see humans, be it customers from lower income group or delivery partners.
The only time malls comply to the human standards is when they get a push from government or court. So, if there’s a genuine desire to treat delivery workers with dignity, platform companies could take legal action on their behalf. They definitely have more resources than all delivery agents combined.
Delivery agents classified as ‘independent contractors’ and not workers
Laws do not provide much relief to delivery agents either. These agents are classified as ‘independent contractors’ rather than workers. This terminology relegates them to the broad ‘self-employed’ category, which is not directly covered by labour laws.
Consequently, the protections afforded by labour laws, which safeguard workers, do not directly extend to them, undermining their safety and disregarding the century-old struggles of workers to attain such protections. The Code on Social Security, 2020 recognized gig and platform workers for the first time and included provisions for framing social security schemes and establishing a Social Security Fund. However, these provisions remain largely on paper, and even there, their implementation process is ambiguous.
The only positive aspect from this was that platform workers were no longer as invisible as they were in the past. The last two years have seen successive discussions by governments regarding the protection of platform workers, highlighted by the passage of the Rajasthan Platform-based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act 2023, the proposal of Karnataka Platform based gig workers (Social security and Welfare) Bill 2024 and Jharkhand Platform based gig workers (registration and Welfare) Bill 2024, and the establishment of Tamil Nadu Platform Based Gig Workers Welfare Board.
Telangana is also currently preparing draft Gig and Platform Workers (Rights and Welfare) Bill, 2024. Last week, government promised the onboarding of platform workers onto the E-Shram portal (E-Shram 2.0) to provide social security benefits such as health insurance and pensions. But here as well, there remains an ongoing debate (more of burden shifting) on whether these platform workers will be registered by platforms or if they will self-register.
Despite ongoing conversations about the rights of platform workers, there are no substantial benefits provided to platform-based workers. While it may appear that extensive efforts are being made on their behalf, in reality, these workers continue to operate with minimal social protections and security.
Following Goyal’s post on X, the owner of Ambience Mall, where it occurred, agreed to implement corrective measures, such as introducing “walkers” who would shuttle the food from restaurants to the spot where delivery agents’ pickup points. But the question arises, was the main concern that delivery agents have to climb extra stairs to collect and deliver food?
The othering and distancing of gig workers
If so, this solution works, as it allows them to stay in one place to collect orders. However, if the purpose of raising this issue was to highlight the humiliation of uniformed workers being denied access to public spaces, then the introduction of “walkers” will only exacerbate the problem. These further distances delivery agents from the public eye, making them even more invisible.
Delivery agents often endure precarious employment situations characterised by low pay, job insecurity, lack of retirement benefits, long hours, and limited bargaining power. They brave extreme weather and unsafe environments daily. The power imbalance between these ‘partners’ and their aggregator counterparts leaves them with little recourse.
They neither have the time to fight nor the power to win. Any time spent, in this situation, negotiating with malls for access to lifts will only detract from their ability to meet delivery targets. As feminist discourse on power suggests, ‘power with’ i.e. collective power, remains an option for workers to unionise.
But the disabling environment at both the platform and national levels has even stripped the platform workers of this. In this context, it’s commendable that Goyal has raised the issue. While unions, academics, and platform workers have long discussed these concerns, they rarely capture the public’s attention. In the age of 30-second reels, few take the time to read a 30-pages report.
The writer is a research analyst at the Institute of Social Studies Trust.